Bristle Worms...Good or Bad?

MMAX · #1 10-18-2010, 02:06 AM

I'm in the process of tearing down a 20gal and transferring some of the stuff into my 100. One problem...I have several large bristle worms living in the 20. By several I mean a whole hell of a lot of them. What should I expect when I add some bristle worm infested live rock from my 20 into the 100? I've heard they are good for the sand bed and are a sign of a healthy, established tank but they're nasty none the less.

Skimmerking · #2 10-18-2010, 02:12 AM

there isn't anything wrong with them
lots of guys including myself run a refugium to eatng detritus and its a great place for them too. if something dies in your tank they are the first to give it to the corpse first thou ...

SeaHorse_Fanatic · #3 10-18-2010, 02:17 AM

Small ones are not bad. Big ones may attack livestock in your tank. I had a huge one attack and bite a chunk out of one of my seahorses. Tore the tank apart to get that sucker out but still lost the seahorse due to its wounds. Large bristleworms also mean high chance of bristles in your fingers when you more rock or corals around. Hate that feeling so I remove the large ones.

An overabundance of bristleworms means you're overfeeding. Just a few is good for your tank as detrivores.

Anthony

MMAX · #4 10-18-2010, 02:33 AM

I'm not feeding at all. The only things alive in the 20gal are the worms and a few small snails and stars. So should I flush the big ones?

Skimmerking · #5 10-18-2010, 02:35 AM

I wouldn't i f you ever get any wrasses they will love to eat them.

MrGoodbytes · #6 10-18-2010, 04:55 AM

Bristleworms are great! Just don't get them near your skin :P. I'd definitely keep them. I have several small ones in my 20L and recently found a larger one of a different species munching on stuff but it's just harmless grazing. When you add them to your 100, you can expect they'll keep the sand stirred up and oxygenated. They'll also help keep things clean.

untamed · #7 10-18-2010, 05:31 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by SeaHorse_Fanatic

Small ones are not bad. Big ones may attack livestock in your tank. I had a huge one attack and bite a chunk out of one of my seahorses. Tore the tank apart to get that sucker out but still lost the seahorse due to its wounds. Large bristleworms also mean high chance of bristles in your fingers when you more rock or corals around. Hate that feeling so I remove the large ones.

An overabundance of bristleworms means you're overfeeding. Just a few is good for your tank as detrivores.

Anthony

That sounds like a eunicid worm...very different that what most of us call "bristleworms". Eunicid's have nasty jaws and are very, very fast movers.

SeaHorse_Fanatic · #8 10-18-2010, 06:33 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by untamed

That sounds like a eunicid worm...very different that what most of us call "bristleworms". Eunicid's have nasty jaws and are very, very fast movers.

Nope, it was a 10" long bristleworm or could have been a fireworm, but it was pink, not red. I tore apart the tank to get it out. In an overfed seahorse tank (is there any other kind?), that worm grew huge. About thick as a pencil, with white fuzzy spikes like a typical bristleworm.

daniella3d · #9 10-18-2010, 05:50 PM

Last week I toutched some large one twice. I had thousands of bristles in 3 of my fingers including my thumb. I used LiquidSkin and it literaly melt them in like 10 to 15 minutes or less, then you just peel the dry liquidskin off and put another layer of fresh liquidskin.

I have also read that soaking in vinegar melt them. It's not that bad. I did not have any iching or redness.

I would be wary of them if you have clams as they might enter a clam and hurt it, but I keep mine as they are part of a precious cleaning up crew. I even feed mine so that I keep them alive. I see them sometime craw in my zoanthids and thinking that the bristles will damage the zoanthids but it has not hapened yet.

I have a flame scallop in a 21 gallons with many very large bristle worms and it's been there for 10 months and it is doing very well, so I guess the large bristle worms does not bother it.

The thing is, I feed that tank a lot because I have non-photosynthetic in there and the scallop, so the cleaning up crew is very important to the equilibrum of my setup.

I don,t think they can even bite, at least they cannot take a bite out of a living seahorse, probably some other predatory type of worm.

Quote:

Originally Posted by MrGoodbytes

Bristleworms are great! Just don't get them near your skin :P. I'd definitely keep them. I have several small ones in my 20L and recently found a larger one of a different species munching on stuff but it's just harmless grazing. When you add them to your 100, you can expect they'll keep the sand stirred up and oxygenated. They'll also help keep things clean.

untamed · #10 10-18-2010, 06:25 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by daniella3d

I don,t think they can even bite, at least they cannot take a bite out of a living seahorse, probably some other predatory type of worm.

That is what I was thinking. I have had fire worms, which look VERY similiar to the avg. bristle worms..but they eat SPS. However, in order to eat the SPS they have to gum it for hours or days at a time. When they do this, it is obvious that the fireworm has latched onto the coral and you can just grab it with tweezers and pull it off.